Casualty spoilers for Saturday’s episode (14 June), which is available to watch now on streaming service BBC iPlayer and hasn’t yet aired on TV. This article contains storyline details that some viewers may prefer to avoid.
Casualty star Michael Stevenson has spoken out about the reality of filming the terrifying crane stunt in this week’s episode.
Paramedic Iain Dean is best known for regularly putting his life at risk in his job, but he faces what could be his most dangerous challenge yet, in the first episode of the show’s new boxset, ‘Supply and Demand’.
Called to Holby Docks with the team, Iain ignores protocol to scale a huge crane without a harness to treat a stranded patient before it’s too late.
Michael, who plays Iain, spoke to us at Inside Soap and explained how the medical drama is pushing boundaries with its latest stunt.
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He said: “I have a running joke with one of the producers on the show where we say, ‘what can we possibly get Iain to do that we haven’t had him do before’. And when she phoned me with this one, I was like ‘don’t be daft!’
“But the next time I saw her, the script was in development, and they were sending me up a crane! She got a stunt in there that Casualty’s never seen before, and Iain’s definitely never seen before!’”
The scale of this action sequence truly is something to behold, but Michael admitted that the temperature was the toughest part of the shoot.
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“It was amazing – and it was very cold!” he laughed. “We shot it for real, so it really was up a 30-metre crane. I did a day’s training during the day when it was quite warm, and then we shot it during a night shoot.
“So that was 2-3am, 30 metres in the air, overlooking Newport, and very, very cold. But I did it! It was great, and it’s the type of thing that only Casualty can pull off.”
While Michael is often the envy of his co-stars for his daring scenes, he says that the dizzy heights of the crane stunt put his fellow actors off.
He said: “Often the lads, Charles [Venn, who plays Jacob] and Milo [Clarke, who plays Teddy] will read the scripts and text me going, ‘how come you get to do all this stuff?’
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“But then when this episode landed, they both texted me separately and said, ‘yeah you can have that one, I wouldn’t do that!’”
To find out how Iain’s tense rescue mission unfolds and what this means for his future, you’ll have to watch the full episode, on BBC One or BBC iPlayer.
Look out for a full chat with Michael Stevenson about what Iain’s up to in this boxset, in an upcoming issue of Inside Soap.
Casualty airs on Saturday nights on BBC One and now streams first on BBC iPlayer, where episodes are released at 6am on the day of transmission.
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